The second workshop of the Engaged Buddhist Studies Seminars is now available for replay. If you’re interested in watching, you can upgrade now and join in on the next workshop, book club, weekly meditation gatherings, and the archive of recordings. A free preview is available above if you’d like to get a sense of the seminar.
*Scholarships and sliding scale are always available; please email me at ad@adrianadifazio.com for options.
Dear friends,
I am sharing the replay from last week’s workshop on “The Dharma’s Transmission to the West.” If you've ever grappled with the overlapping impacts of modernity, colonialism, white supremacy, and capitalism on meditation and Buddhism in the United States, I made this workshop for you!
In this workshop, you’ll learn:
The arrival of Buddhism in the U.S. by Chinese and Japanese immigrants
Influential Asian meditation masters who brought the dharma to the West and started convert communities
The impact of modernity on the dharma’s transmission, including its intersections with Orientalism and white supremacy
Capitalism’s role in shaping Western Buddhism and the rise of the secular mindfulness movement
Postmodern, postsecular, and decolonial interpretations of the dharma as responses to Western cultural forces
During the workshop, we had a discussion on the racial rearticulation of Buddhism in the West and white supremacy. I’d like to clarify a point: Modern translations of the dharma are not always synonymous with a translation that privileges whiteness.
Many convert-Buddhist practitioners (myself included) initially came to Buddhism because of a more “modern” presentation—one that emphasizes psychology and universalism. This in and of itself is not bad. White supremacy comes into play when we privilege this type of translation over other forms of dharma practice and/or participate in their erasure.
Here’s an example of how I’ve unintentionally fallen into this trap: When I was in my first year of seminary, I had a conversation with one of my professors about ritual offerings. My dharma practice is rooted in Shambhala Buddhism, a tradition founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In this lineage, the dharma is presented in a modern fashion and so that has markedly shaped my understanding of the teachings.
I made a comment to my professor that when I make an incense offering to a protector deity, the Buddha, or bodhisattva, I am not making an offering “literally to them” but as an expression of the qualities I hope to cultivate within my mind.
His eyes widened. He responded by saying that when he made an offering to Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, he wasn’t only doing it as a symbolic representation but that he was literally making an offering to her.
My cheeks flushed in shame and embarrassment.
In that moment, I realized I had inadvertently privileged a psychological interpretation of ritual offering. It’s okay, of course, if I still relate to the practice in that way. The issue here is that I said it in a way that was disparaging to other views. I held a perspective that was denigrative to non-modern forms of practice. While it may seem benign, it’s a small example of how colonial modes of thinking can inadvertently inform our perceptions of “correct” or “better” forms of dharma practice.
A more postmodern, postsecular, or decolonial interpretation of ritual offerings would challenge the false binary between the material and ephemeral. It would refuse to privilege the psychological over the sacred, or the secular over religious. It would recognize that these dimensions do not need to exist in opposition with one another.
As radically engaged meditators and Buddhists, we need to not only become aware but interrogate the ways hegemonic cultural forces inform our understanding of Buddhism as a tradition. This matters because we are all shaping and transmitting the dharma in real-time. We are all “making” Buddhism in the West collectively.
While this workshop only touches the surface of this topic, I hope it offers food for thought as we all bring a more loving and sharper analysis to the dharma’s transformation.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions, or reflections below.
With love,
Adriana
P.S. Please save the date for May’s Engaged Dharma Book Club! We’re reading Norma Wong’s When No Thing Works and will be meeting Thursday, May 29th 6:00-8:00pm EST to discuss!
